Florida v. Bostick
Citation and Court
501 U.S. 429 (1991) — Supreme Court of the United States
Facts
Terrance Bostick was a passenger on a bus traveling from Miami to Atlanta. During a layover, two officers boarded the bus as part of a drug interdiction effort, approached Bostick at the back of the bus, displayed their badges, asked for his identification and ticket, and asked for consent to search his bag. He consented; the bag contained cocaine. Bostick argued the encounter constituted a seizure without reasonable suspicion.
Issue
Is a police encounter on a bus a “seizure” when the suspect, although not free to leave the bus without abandoning his journey, would otherwise be free to decline the officers’ requests?
Holding
No; a bus encounter is not automatically a seizure merely because the passenger is on a confined bus; the proper inquiry is whether a reasonable person would feel free to decline the officers’ requests or otherwise terminate the encounter.
Rule / Doctrine
The test for whether a seizure has occurred is whether, taking into account all the circumstances of the encounter, a reasonable person would feel free to decline the officers’ requests or otherwise terminate the encounter. The relevant constraint is not the bus itself—which the person chose to board—but police conduct. If a reasonable person would feel free to refuse, there is no seizure.
Significance
Florida v. Bostick is the leading case on police-citizen encounters in confined public spaces such as buses, trains, and airports. It clarifies that the mere fact of being on a bus does not make every police approach a seizure, which has allowed broad-based bus and train interdiction programs to survive Fourth Amendment challenge.